Overall across America, fewer people are dying from heart disease than they were in the 1970s, but that statistic doesn’t hold up in the southern part of the United States, according to a story on usnews.com.
Although the new data doesn’t identify the causes of the heart rate deaths, it is well documented that the region often has higher rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease, all contributors to the increased risk of heart disease.
Dr. Donald Barr, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, says the issue is clearly social, and social conditions, including poverty and low education levels are at the root of the problem.
“Social risk factors for heart disease are more common in the South,” said Dr. Barr. “This disparity [in heart disease deaths] is not about hospital care. It’s about broader social structure.”
The study, published in the March 22 edition of the journal Circulation, evaluated the data from all counties in the US recording heart disease deaths from a period covering 1973 through 2010. Across the country, the rate of death fell by almost 62 percent during the period, but individual counties’ rates varied widely.
Some counties recorded small improvements, most within the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and parts of Texas, with the death rates falling from nine to 50 percent, while counties with the greatest improvements, primarily in the northern region of the country, saw the rates drop from 64 to 83 percent.
In a drastic turnaround, half of the counties in the North in the 1970s were considered to have high rates of heart disease deaths, and that number has dropped to just 4 percent by 2010. On the other end of the spectrum, counties in the South saw their death rates rise from 24 percent in the 70s, to 38 percent by 2010.
Lead researcher Michele Casper, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said “We observed the north-south shift over a relatively short period of time. So something powerful is going on.”
Casper adds she hopes the counties and communities in these areas can use this information to address “local factors” that contribute to the death rates and heart disease in general.